Category Outboard

The very first delay I owned was the first of the series FX90. I loved that thing until I seduced by the perfectly clean sounds of digital delays. Then I couldn’t get rid of this thing fast enough and replace it with a fancy rack unit. Not long after that I kicked myself because I missed some of the character an analogue delay brings to the table.

Recently I tracked one of these guys down for a fair price (under $100) and added it to my arsenal.

I bought a Line 6 DL4 pedal, which I thought was pretty cool. I used that on a few songs and was always frustrated the delay was in stompbox form. I don't really have a good place in the studio for these things.
Come to find out, Line 6 made a rack mount version called the Echo Pro. It's the same guts with a few extra features - including patch saving.Read More

I found another old digital delay. This one from the 80’s (if the colour of the knobs are any indication).

This device has two delay circuits which are wired independently to their respective connections on the back of the unit (more on that in a second).

One delay circuit (B) is just a standard delay. The delay times are from 4 to 1024 milliseconds. Time controls are in 4 time blocks with a time sweep knob. Pretty standard for a unit of this age. There is also a effect mix control and a delay repeat control. The other delay circuit (A) has a shorter delay time – 0.5 to 256 milliseconds – with the same style time controls. It also includes modulation and speed controls for flange/chorus type effects.

The jacks on the back of this delay are everything you need and more...

I just got this and haven’t had much time to play with it – but so far I’m digging it.

4 inputs, 4 outputs. The in/out level controls are dedicated knobs on the front panel. You can define 4 different effects with each channel or combine them. You can also stack up to four effects (4 reverbs in series anyone?). I’ve also seen it has a 4 band vocoder but I haven’t played with it yet. At first glance the programming is a little funky but another hour playing with it and I’m sure I’ll figure it out.